The Reason for It All

I am one of the most screwed up persons that you’ve heard of. I’m 15 years old. More mature than most adults; smarter that most adults. But, I don’t want this. I don’t want to carry this burden. I’m collapsing under my insecurity; crushed by my past, my present, and my future. For I know what lies ahead in this life: sorrow, misery, grief. No one knows this more than I, though people claim I’m too young to fully grasp what life has to offer. So wrong they are. I have life pinned down in its fetal position, screaming its ugly truths to me in terror. I soak it all in. I learn from it. I get depressed from it. Then I stick my head up high and act like nothing bothers me. I am a lion with a soft heart. It wasn’t until a few months ago that reality hit me like a brick on glass. I shattered, then immediately tried to put myself back together. I spent long nights staring at my ceiling, reflecting on my past. I realized my life is a wreck. It’s depressing to look in a mirror and literally jump back at whose staring back at you, to realize you’ve been living behind a wall of insecurity. And now that wall has come down, exposing me to the world. I wasn’t ready yet. I was still a boy caught up in his fanciful dreams. However, I really was never a young boy. No, I was robbed of it. I think that all of my problems started when I was about 8, when my ignorance led to my downfall. My 21 year old cousin was visiting from out of town. I was so naïve as to ask him to sleep in my room. I swear to you that I only let him do what he did to me because I was young and new absolutely nothing about sex. I had no idea where babies came from or that it’s wrong for an adult to touch you like that. I did not know that this until I was 12. He did it almost annually until then. The consequences of knowing that he molested me was far too dire than I knew up until now. I still felt “normal”, like nothing was wrong. However, it had a subconscious effect on me. I cannot have close contact with anyone: girls, friends, and family. I don’t think I have ever really hugged my mother. I hate dancing. I have never kissed a girl. I’ve never had a girl friend. I’ve never really had a girl as a friend. I get furious when my classmates or brother calls me “gay” jokingly. This is nothing compared to my mother thinking I’m gay, not jokingly. I am enraged when my dad sarcastically tells me that I’m stupid. And lastly and most drastically, it has warped my sexual orientation. I’m straight now, though. I have not attributed these effects to my cousin until recently. I don’t like close contact because of the subconscious fear that they will touch me. Unless this has happened to you, which I pray it never did, you could never understand it. As for hugging my mom, of course I’ve given her the meaningless good-bye hug, but never a true hug where you feel like no one can harm you while you are in their arms. The only time I had a hug like that was when I was 11. My dad

was in the Army reserves. One night he came up to my room, I was still awake, and he hugged me. I knew. I don’t know how, but I knew. I jumped into his arms, tears rolling down my face. He had his orders. The worst kind: executive. This meant that he could be gone for 3 months or up to a year. He is a doctor, surgeon, more specifically. A rarity in the Army, which is why his orders were so special. Two weeks later, he was in Kuwait. Not the worst of places. We just bombed Iraq a few months before, but Kuwait was settle. It still did not help that I didn’t have a positive male role model while he was gone. Three forever lasting months pass by. No word. Four months, five months, and finally six months go by. I was at Universal Studios with my mom, my brother, and my brother’s friend. About noon she got a phone call. No big deal. But then, for the rest of the day she looked sad. I was too high on sugar to care why, so I left it alone. As we were leaving, right outside the front gates she told me. “Your dad is going to Afghanistan.” Again, an indefinite amount of time. All of the press was in Iraq because there are hotels there and not in Afghanistan, so I did not know how bad it was there. I knew that because my dad is a lieutenant colonel and a doctor, there is no way that he would be allowed off base. Luckily there was a phone that like there was in Kuwait, so he did get to call me. I wish he didn’t. In the background I could hear mortars going off. Several times he would half to hang up to run to his tent, grab his body armor, and run to the bomb shelter or hospital, if he was needed. Just so you know, he told me that he operating on a terrorist and while he was performing surgery that would save his life, bombs started to fall. All he told me was everyone in the hospital who was operating stayed put even when the explosions made the ground shake. He risked his own life to save the enemy’s life. This continued for another 4 months. Finally he was able to go home. I waited at the airport. I waited. I waited. I saw a Soldier coming down the stairs. He looked exhausted. Skinny. Too skinny to be my dad. I couldn’t believe it. I kept staring blankly. It was him. I nearly tackled him trying to hug him. Tears roll down my face. That was my last “real” hug. When you mix being molested and having your father taken away from you (I realize that some of you reading this never grew up with a dad and think that I’m lucky I still have one, but if you take a lollypop away from a baby, it’s going to cry, but if it never had the lollypop before, it doesn’t know what it is missing), you get me. I tried to raise myself. I tried to be independent, to blend in with society. It didn’t work. I’m a failure at parenting myself. I need a mother that knows me. I need a mother who doesn’t accuse me of being gay. Who listens to me when I tell her I’m not. I feel like curling into the fetal position and hiding under the covers. From what? From my past? From my insecurities? I know what will happen to me. I know what I will become. I will graduate from high school and go to West Point. I will be a Soldier. Because as a Soldier, it is impossible to stick out. I will finally feel like I’m actually blending in, like I actually have something in common with someone. I will be sent to the front lines and I will die

honorably serving you, serving this country. I have nothing to live for. I have no one to live for. I have only a brain, open eyes, and a callus heart.